The Denver Broncos are your top seed in the AFC for the first time in a decade. The last time they did this, they ended up winning the Super Bowl! It’s been a long time coming for this franchise and its fanbase.
The Broncos won the Super Bowl in 2016, and all was right in the world. A month later, Peyton Manning retired, and little did we know that pain that was about to follow. Denver selected Paxton Lynch in that year’s draft to replace their Hall of Famer.
It was evident that Lynch was not NFL-ready, so Denver had to ride with 2015 seventh-round pick Trevor Siemian. He wasn’t bad, but it was apparent why he was a seventh-rounder. He had a solid 2016 season, throwing for 18 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, but the team went 9-7 and missed the playoffs.
Head Coach Gary Kubiak stepped down for health reasons after the season, and in came Vance Joseph. The 2017 season was a disaster as Denver went 5-11 and Trevor Siemiean was benched by week nine. Brock Osweiler, who came back from the Houston Texans, was the next man up, and the results were more or less the same. The coaching staff decided to give Lynch a shot late in 2017, and the result was terrible.
Lynch never saw the field after that game, and the season was a disaster. The Broncos then decided to go the veteran quarterback route in 2018 and rely on their defense, and brought in Case Keenum.
The former Houston Cougar was an upgrade from Siemian and Osweiler, but that’s not saying much, as he threw for 18 touchdowns and 15 interceptions. It also hurts when you realize that in the 2018 draft, we passed up on Josh Allen, which GM John Elway regrets to this day.
The Keenum experiment failed, and Joseph was given the boot. The next coach was Vic Fangio, a shrewd defensive coordinator who had had plenty of success in the NFL as a coordinator and got first Head coaching gig. Joe Flacco was brought in as a veteran to manage the offense and not lose games.
Notice the pattern here? Denver was content with being average on offense in hopes of letting the defense do the heavy lifting, as they wanted to recapture that 2015 magic. Clearly, that did not work. Flacco made just eight starts in 2019, going 2-6.
Brandon Allen entered in relief and didn’t do much better, going 1-2. At 3-8, the Broncos were again out of the playoff hunt by early December. They decided to roll with Drew Lock, their second-round pick that year, and things started looking up.
Lock went 4-1 as a starter down the stretch and put up some of the best quarterbacking Broncos Country had seen in years. Holy cow, is this our guy? He wasn’t, as he faltered in 2020, throwing for 16 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, and Denver went 5-11.
The Broncos brought in Teddy Bridgewater to compete with Lock for the starting job the following season. Bridgewater won the quarterback battle and went 7-7 in the 14 games he played, which was the best since Manning. An injury ended his season early, and Lock came in to finish the year 0-3.
Denver was ready to move on from Lock and had seen enough from Fangio. The Broncos hired Nathaniel Hackett in hopes of landing his buddy Aaron Rodgers, but had no luck. They did, however, land Russell Wilson, and oh my goodness, this team was back!
The franchise and fans had hope again that this would be the year the Broncos break that playoff drought. That optimism ended so quickly, and the 2022 season was the worst season I’ve ever seen as a fan. Wilson was atrocious, and Hackett got fired after the Christmas Game, where we lost 51-14 to the Matthew Stafford-LESS Los Angeles Rams. Not only that, Denver offered Wilson a Five-Year $250 million extension, so they were stuck with him.
It was dark times, and 2022 was rock bottom.
Two men have saved this franchise: Sean Payton and Bo Nix. Let’s begin with Payton. He took over a messy organization that had an awful year in 2022 with a quarterback that everyone was down on.
Payton’s goal in 2023 was to right the ship. That ship failed to leave the dock when they started 1-5 and lost a game 70-20. Denver somehow went further down than what they thought was rock bottom in ’22.
All of a sudden, the tides turned. Vance Joseph, who returned as defensive coordinator, turned the defense around, and that unit sparked a five-game win streak. The Broncos went from 1-5 to 6-5 and found themselves at 7-6 with meaningful December games.
Wilson’s limitations, however, were too much for the team to overcome. They went 1-3 down the stretch and finished 8-9. Despite the poor finish, the season was a semi-success and a good building block.
The Broncos cut Wilson in the offseason and drafted Bo Nix with the 12th overall pick, bringing Payton’s vision into focus.
With Nix as the starter, they have gone 24-10 in two seasons, and he has put up some incredible numbers. He set a franchise rookie record with 33 touchdowns in his first rookie season, the team went 10-7, and earned their first playoff berth in nine years.
This year, Nix has avoided the dreaded sophomore slump and been more than solid for the Broncos. Thanks to his fourth-quarter heroics and the dominant defense, they are 14-3 and the number one seed.
Let this be a lesson for other NFL teams. It doesn’t matter how messy the situation is. If you find the right guy at quarterback and at head coach, fortunes can flip fast. The New England Patriots are another example.
I get that missing the playoffs for nine straight years isn’t the worst thing in the world. Franchises like the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets have suffered longer and are still suffering.
For the Broncos, though, nine years is a lifetime. This is a proud franchise, and before this string of losing seasons, they had only been under .500 in consecutive seasons once, and that was in the 70s.
Denver was in weird territory, not being able to get itself back on the map for so long, and finally, it has in 2026.
It feels good to see them back in the driver’s seat.
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